The door opened without sound.
Not inward. Not outward.
It simply ceased to exist.
One moment there was black stone etched with pulsing symbols; the next there was absence where it had stood, replaced by a view so vast my mind rejected it before my eyes could.
I stepped forward anyway.
What she wanted to show me hung in a space that dwarfed the hall, the staircase, the void—everything. There was no ceiling here. No walls. No measurable dimension. It was as if reality had been peeled back to expose something that had never been meant to be observed.
It was an indescribable thing.
Even calling it a "thing" felt like an insult.
It was easily the size of a star.
That comparison came to me instinctively, though I had never truly seen a star up close. It radiated presence the way a sun radiated heat. Except this did not shine with light. It pulsed with density. With existence compressed so tightly it distorted the space around it.
Chains bound it.
Chains larger than planets.
